Because I don’t want to limit this new found writing mojo only to blogging, I introduce to you, Fiction Fridays!  I shall (try to) upload stories, either in whole or in part during Fridays in an attempt to hone my rusty  hand at this.

On with the first story of the year!  

Summary: This is something I’ve had lying around on my notebook for over a year now.  Based on a true story-ish.

A Slice In Time

Sometime in October 2007

It was such a sweet smile.  He stepped into the room, immediately looking out of place.  And he looked like he knew it.  He looked awkward, as if he were torn between standing up to his full height (and announcing to the room that he didn’t belong) and hunching down to a stoop (in a vain attempt to blend in) as he walked up to the raised platform in front of the room to assist the assigned professor of the day with the audio-visual set up.

The said professor looked up from fiddling with the laptop, finally noticing his presence and beckoning him over in a silent signal for help.  The students, engrossed with their own affairs, failed to notice his ascent to the front of the room.  The students were already growing restless, even though the lecture hasn’t formally started yet.  It started off, the unrest, like a low rumble that started from somewhere around the back.  The noise was elevating, slowly but surely, the different simultaneous voices merging into one massive buzzing sound.

If the lecture professor noticed the growing agitation of the students, she didn’t show it.  She kept of fiddling with the laptop, a look of perpetual puzzlement etched onto her face. 

Amidst the noise, one student seated in the middle seat on the right side of the second row made the decision to look up at the raised dais where the two figures stood, adjusting and fussing with different colored wires.  The hundred forty-nine other people in the amphitheater didn’t matter, not at that particular slice in time, because at that moment, he looked at that specific portion of the room, and their eyes met.

For her part, she was just mostly surprised.  Surprised that he had even looked at her direction at all and even more so at the fact that he held her gaze.  She was at a loss; wanting to look away, to lean over to her seatmate’s desk and engross herself in a conversation about the latest skinny jeans trend going around.  It was an easy way, after all, to get out of the situation at hand. 

But she was trapped; she couldn’t move.

It provided her a little bit of comfort to see his eyes widen the same way she figured hers did, to see in them the same bit of uncertainty and hesitation.  It was at least nice to know that somehow, she wasn’t alone in this.  That somehow they were on the same page.

And then it happened without her consent; the muscles on her face unwittingly formed into a smile.  A couple of nanoseconds later she berated herself for her stupidity, for placing herself in one embarrassing situation. 

So basically it came as yet another jolt of shock to see a look of surprise pass over his features, only to be quickly followed by, if she wasn’t mistaken, by a look of relief.  He was relieved?  Finally his face relaxed into an easy smile, the corner of his eyes crinkling gently around the edges. 

They looked at each other, trapped, smiling mindlessly at each other in their own world for a few seconds that stretched into eternity.  The moment broken only when her seatmate tapped her on the shoulder, asking if she had an extra pen.

When she turned her attention back to the front of the room, she caught his form already opening the door and stepping out.  With a sigh she followed him walk out of the room, knowing that she wouldn’t be seeing for the rest of the day.

And so she turned her attention back to her seatmate, facing the reality that she’s back once more to being just a student stuck in a lecture room while her professor and instructor from last semester was outside, roaming the building room-to-room, giving whatever help he could provide to the lecturers who needed it. 

-Fin-